


Do Not Go Gentle

by golden_d



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, M/M, Spoilers through Children of Earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-01
Updated: 2010-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_d/pseuds/golden_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She remembers: Why shouldn’t she? She isn’t bound by the laws of life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do Not Go Gentle

Jack was the first one to notice. There was an incinerator deep in the bowels of Torchwood, and when he lifted the body—wires, armour, and all—to throw it into the flames, he felt a shiver, too impossibly cold when he was so close to the fire. For a moment her dead eyes seemed to flutter. And then he let the body drop.

He would send the ashes to be buried at the memorial by Canary Wharf.

*

No one wanted to clean up the blood from the corridors, though the four of them had silently, begrudgingly, angrily, resignedly washed the blood from the main portion of the Hub. Jack remained there that night, tending to Myfanwy and feeding her chocolate. (Tosh went home and fed herself chocolate and a healthy amount of red wine. Owen and Gwen fed on terror and thoughts of each other.) So it was that when Ianto returned to work, he found himself faced with, as Jack put it, “cleaning up his mess.”

“You know the way,” Jack had said, and whether he’d meant it cruelly or not, Ianto had almost handed in his resignation then and there. Instead he’d taken the mop and bucket and followed the familiar route into the depths of the Hub.

The blood, when he’d last seen it, had been smeared and spattered. He expected to find it in much the same condition—dried, rather than fresh, but unchanged. But when he arrived, the scene was different, the blood fallen in a silhouette across the floor. A shadow of rust, unmistakably feminine, unmistakably cyberized. _Most of it probably isn’t even her blood,_ Ianto thought, and vomited into the bucket.

*

(There was a brief period when she had company, enough to exchange a few words. _Hello. Are you dead?_

_Yes. But not for long._ )

*

Owen kept misplacing his paperwork, his coffee mug, his scalpel. He blamed Gwen most of all, despite her private insistence that “Just because we’ve stopped fucking, Owen, it doesn’t mean I’m going to play practical jokes on you for some petty revenge!” He blamed Ianto next, because he didn’t trust that bastard, never had; and blamed Jack after that because sometimes Jack just did things out of spite. He didn’t notice Tosh enough to think of blaming her, and, well—

He never thought of _her_ at all. But when she was alive, he hadn’t liked her; and now that she was dead, she didn’t like him either.

*

When the Rift opened, she almost went through out of pure curiosity, but was stopped by the delightful sight of her Ianto shooting That Bastard Owen. She curled around him in pride when he dragged Owen away from the Rift, but he shivered with cold and revulsion, and she withdrew. She was happy for him. She thought that he’d be happy to see her.

*

(There was a flash of light and a pull at the corners of existence when they shot Jack. _You!_ they exclaimed as one, and then the pull was gone, and Jack with it. She resolved to pay more attention.)

*

( _So,_ he said. _How long have you been here?_

_Since you shot me. You’ve been dead a lot longer than you were the last time._

_I might’ve wrestled with the Devil. I think I’m entitled. Look—_

_Yes. I do a lot of looking._

_I’m not going to ask your permission._

_I wouldn’t give it if you did._

_It doesn’t matter. You’re dead._

_For most of us it’s a permanent condition._

The edges of existence began to curl up.

_I hate you,_ she said, and:

_Don’t hurt him any more than I did._ And:

_He’s still healing._

But because Jack Harkness was a decent bit of an asshole, and never especially good at active listening, one of the first things he did upon living was hurt him even more.)

*

Torchwood One had never suffered the ignominy of being short-staffed. Torchwood Three persisted in the illusion that Jack Harkness was coming back. She didn’t understand it, but she did what she could to help.

Owen’s files organized themselves, although whether he could find them was another matter. Gwen’s coffee never spilled, no matter how she sloshed the mug. Weevil muck always managed to stay far away from Ianto’s shoes. Tosh didn’t need much help, but now and then during a particularly bad case, her favourite chocolates would appear on her mouse pad. She mentioned it once, over pizza, and her co-workers all disavowed any knowledge. “Maybe we have a ghost,” Tosh suggested lightly, and when Owen made fun of her, he spent the next week looking for his microscope.

*

(She didn’t go with them to the Himalayas. She felt the uprising of spirits around her, the rush of power to the mysterious Doctor. She remembers: Why shouldn’t she? She isn’t bound by the laws of life.)

*

John Hart could see her, though he didn’t acknowledge her. When he came from, ghosts were commonplace enough, but it was bad form to point out the ghost that no one else could see. (Hart didn’t usually pay much attention to form—well, except the human-alien-mammalian form—but this particular bit of etiquette had been ingrained in him since childhood. His mother wouldn’t have minded the illegal activities, but she’d have been dearly disappointed if he'd mentioned the ghost.) He thought Jack must have known about her, but there were so many _better_ things to tease him about.

So he didn’t bother the ghost, and she didn’t bother him.

*

She thought that the reason Tosh did not have much luck in love, was quite simply _because_ she left it up to luck, relying on crossed fingers and wishes on stars instead of taking action and luck be damned. It had never been the way she’d done things. But despite that, when Tommy returned to his home time, she left a flower at Tosh’s desk. Tosh thought it was from Jack, and smiled at him; Jack thought it must be from Ianto, and smiled at _him_. They didn’t think of her, which she was used to, but she liked that it made Ianto smile.

*

The only time she found herself at a loss was when Adam swooped in. Everything was upside-down, and if she could have, she would have killed Adam for tormenting her Ianto the way he had. And after everyone forgot, and Adam died, she still remembered, and she seethed. It was the only time she wished for hands again—for the strength of steel around her arms. She could have made him suffer.

*

When That Bastard Owen died, he didn’t stay that way for very long. Well. He did, but not the same way she did, which was a big distinction. She was glad—he was awful company. Tosh really did have horrible taste in romantic partners.

Now that Owen was zombieing his way around the world, he had eyes into the other worlds, could always see her in the shadows, out of the corner of his eye. One thing she had made very clear, though:

_You’re dead. I’m dead. The normal rules don’t apply, even if you are more corporeal than the average ghost. If you tell **anyone** about me, you’ll suffer for the rest our mutual unlives._

She liked that he was afraid of her. After all the shit he’d put Ianto through, it was deeply satisfying to finally turn the tables.

*

Back when she’d been alive, she and Ianto had been toying with the idea of marriage. They’d gone window-shopping for rings, and she had made sure that he knew what her ring size was. None of it mattered now—she wondered sometimes if he remembered all that, amidst the trauma of her conversion and death; if, when he thought of her, it was as a woman whole or as a machine—but with Gwen’s wedding on the horizon, she felt a far-distant pang of longing. Though she could touch dead things—inanimate things, never-living things—she couldn't touch the living. And although they could feel the cold of her presence, she couldn't feel the warmth of theirs.

When the team were gone, she and Myfanwy were left to guard the Hub. They had a complicated relationship, having been first acquainted via bloodshed and attempted murder. Once she died, of course, Myfanwy seemed to forgive her, and she supposed the pteranodon had seen stranger things than ghosts here in the twenty-first century. Then again, she had seen stranger things than dinosaurs, and so she helped keep Myfanwy’s nest clean. It was the least she could do to be useful.

When Jack returned from the wedding and threw a handful of confetti in the air, she helped spread it across every available surface of the Hub. It was the least she could do to cause trouble.

*

Once, early in her death, she had tried to follow the team out of the Hub, only to discover that she was too tied to place and Rift to travel far without an ache and a pull that felt like death all over again. So although she never went with them on their missions and adventures, she could always tell how it had gone when they returned. If successful, Jack had a bounce in his step and Tosh made small talk with Ianto or Gwen. If not, no one would talk, and more often than not, Jack would return alone.

When Jack and Ianto returned to the Hub, sodden with rain and chilled deep, she greeted them at the door—and they shivered, shuddered, and for the first time ever while alive, Jack looked straight at her and glared.

“What is it?” Ianto asked, as she faded up to Myfanwy’s nest, and Jack wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“Nothing. Thought I saw a ghost. What do you say we get out of these wet clothes and warm up a little, huh?”

*

Of course it was Ianto who left Gwen the GPS to Flat Holm. Of course it was Lisa who had knocked the GPS off a shelf and onto his desk to find.

Their devious streaks were what had drawn them together back in London in the first place. It was nice to see there was at least something that hadn’t changed.

*

The second time John Hart came to the Hub, she didn’t make it easy on him, but there were only so many preventative measures that could be taken. Once he was in, she curled herself around him like a fog, murmuring in his ear: _They are mine. They are mine to protect, to torment, to guard. Tread carefully._

(But he still shot Jack, and she said, _I’m sorry_ , and Jack said, _I’ll get better._

_I couldn’t keep him out._

_Not your fault,_ Jack said, and he then was alive again.)

She watched John and Gray carry him out, and Myfanwy screamed with rage.

*

She knew, when Tosh lay bleeding out on the floor, that she would not be much comfort to her. There were no flowers to be brought or chocolate to be supplied, and she had no healing powers. But she knew what it was like to die alone, and she whispered fiercely at Tosh, _Stay alive,_ until Jack swept in and cradled her in his arms.

*

Owen was dead for real, and she didn’t even have the energy to tack on “That Bastard” to his name. She hoped he was haunting the nuclear plant, playing the poltergeist for a bunch of uptight engineers.

*

The Hub was never fully quiet, but for a long time the Hub was subdued, almost muted. Jack, Gwen, and Ianto clung together; Myfanwy circled the ceiling; Lisa stayed in the shadows, wondering if she was fading away at the edges, or if she just missed having Owen around to tease.

After a while, although Jack and Ianto still clung tightly, Gwen began to cling more tightly to her husband than to Torchwood. Myfanwy returned to her nest. Lisa, in a fit of boredom, cleaned Myfanwy’s nest and deposited its contents squarely in front of the coffeemaker. Oh, it was mean, but it was worth it to see the look on Ianto’s face. The confusion thereafter, when he couldn’t fathom how Myfanwy had done it but couldn’t see how else the manure had gotten there—the confusion when Jack glared at her but wouldn’t divulge what he was looking at, since all Ianto could see was the wall—she liked that a good bit less. Jack refused to tell Ianto about her, and although she had tried to tell him herself—

_(Ianto, it’s me, you remember me don’t you, I’m still here, can’t you see hear feel sense me at all?)_

—he wasn’t the slightest bit psychically sensitive. He never had been; it was something their superiors at Torchwood One had worried about. The least psychically sensitive minds were the easiest to get into.

She had always been exceptionally sensitive. It hadn’t really worked out to her benefit, in the end, but she supposed it was how (if not necessarily why) she was still here. And no one knew she was here except two men from the future and a dinosaur from the past.

Thinking about the big questions of existence was a waste of time. The problem was that she had a lot of time to waste. It made her restless.

*

She could feel something in the air. Not something ghostly, but something… _other_. Something that was manipulating someone else’s spirit—no. Make that many spirits, of many someone-elses. It made her un-skin crawl.

There was a general unease among the team, and she settled with Myfanwy in her nest to keep watch.

And she watched, as they returned, and as they fled, and as Jack—

_Oh, this is going to hurt coming back from._

The Rift exploded as the Hub did, and she felt herself welling up with power, felt Myfanwy’s body shatter but her soul survive.

_Do you want us to stay?_ she asked Jack.

_No. Go._

She nodded, rubbing Myfanwy’s beak for the first time, and feeling it solid. _Come on, girl. Let’s fly._  


**Author's Note:**

> Written for [pomkeygeekange](http://pomkeygeekange.livejournal.com/) as part of [tw_femficfest](http://tw-femficfest.livejournal.com/). 
> 
> Title stolen shamelessly from Dylan Thomas. Thanks to the ever-wonderful 51stcenturyfox for the beta!


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